A blog about how paintings, photographs, and prints have helped me visualize my fiction—both Where the Light Falls and works-in-progress—with a hope that they will stimulate other writers and readers, too.

A small sample of the images that inspired me appears below. Click on these or any images in the posts to see enlargements. In the text, click on colored words to activate links.

Picturing a World

The American Civil War (1861-1865) has deeply affected the psyches of Cousin Effie and Edward; and as soon as I learned in my background reading that Carolus-Duran fought in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), I knew a shared experience of war could be an overt point of contact between him and Edward. Read More

I have sent you a separate message via the web site - but I would be very keen to know the source of your comment " learned in my background reading that Carolus-Duran fought in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)". I am trying to detail his life during this period. I know that he was living in Brussels in April 1871..but want to know more regarding him in the war.

thanks

Paul

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Paul

December 29, 2016 4:34 AM EST

I apologize for not responding to your e-mail. The website mailbox relegated it to the spam folder and is refusing to open it!

I put a lot of what I learned into pp. 381–384 of Where the Light Falls. Briefly, Carolus-Duran served in the 7th Company of the 19th Battalion of the National Guard throughout the Siege of Paris. It was a company made up almost entirely of artists from the Notre-Dame-des Champs neighborhood of Paris and was posted to Bastion 84. The men would go home to their families at night. Immediately upon the ceasefire in 1871, Carolus-Duran applied for a passport and took his wife, mother, daughter, and sister to Brussels.

A terrific English-language source is Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under the Siege (1870–71), University of Chicago Press (2002).

Blog tip! Today’s post at the invaluable Bibliodyssey blog is a portfolio of Parisian architectural drawings selected from the digitized Chauvet collection at the BnF’s Gallica site. The post provides information and links. To check it out, click here.

I spent a semester in France as an undergraduate. A visit to the Cluny that sophomore year fed my interest in the Middle Ages, later my field of specialization in graduate school. When I read that women art students in the 19th C valued the opportunity its enclosed gardens offered them to work outdoors unmolested, I knew I had to send Jeanette there. Read More

From the time I started writing, Sargent’s painting of a couple strolling in the Luxembourg Garden was a key image for me. Edward and Jeanette. The fountain. The fashion silhouette of the woman’s dress (no bustle). Touches of red. Light. Read More

After a hard morning of research in Paris, the omelette was fantastic!

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John

December 16, 2015 5:30 AM EST

How did you find this spot? We have a print of JSS's "A Walk in the Luxembourg Gardens" and are going to Paris next year. I would LOVE to be in the exact spot where this painting takes place. Thank you.

Katherine's reply: It's very easy. It's in the plaza with a big pond and fountain right in front of the Palais de Luxembourg. The couple are headed toward the palace, though it does not appear in the painting. Have a wonderful time!

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Elaine Homestead

December 16, 2015 7:01 AM EST

Hi Katherine,WOW!! I am sooo impressed with the swiftness and preciseness of your response. We will easily find this place. Thank you again. EH

This loosely painted detail of the distant Arc de Triomphe in the background of Hassam’s painting of the Champs Elysées is the kind of thing I had in mind when Jeanette sarcastically suggests sketching Adeline Vann in the Tuileries Garden with the arch just Read More

In the 1870’s, the small river Bièvre, which is now paved over within Paris, carried the waste of tanneries, leather factories, paper mills, and other noisome industries. Edward crosses it when he goes to help Effie at a McCall Mission clinic.

The McCall Mission was a Protestant missionary group. When I first ran across a reference to it in a published diary of sculptor Lorado Taft from his days as a student in Paris, I almost whooped with glee in the library. Now, I knew what Cousin Effie did with her spare hours!

I loved this picture when I came across it early in my research—it was so specific and full of workaday details. Here was what the gray walls artists wanted for neutral light looked like, along with a chair for a sitter, a paintbox, a palette. Bazille’s studio is not exactly how I later imagined Sonja and Amy’s—oh, but look at that hot, hot stove! Coal supplied by Count Witkiewicz! And now that I look at the picture again, I see it as one of Jeanette’s empty rooms as a portrait.

I'd no idea that this wealth of images depicting the painting life existed! Thank you so much for bringing them to our attention, they're delicious. Coming back to your blog is almost as refreshing as going out to a gallery.

Blog Alert:I'm almost too excited to type, but you MUST go to today's American Girls Art Club post for a book review of Where the Light Falls with a GORGEOUS illustrated tour of Paris to take you to landmarks in the novel. Thank you, Marge! Read More

After his fencing less, Edward finds himself in the vicinity of Les Halles, the great covered food market of central Paris. Outside its steel-and-glass structure, street vendors gathered in the open air as Gilbert depicts them here and as they still gather in the tree-shaded squares of smaller towns in France on market days.

NB: an inquisitive dog on the loose in the lower right-hand corner and two more cheerfully settled behind a stand. Read More

On a fall visit to Paris, Edward walks through the Tuileries Garden as evening descends. Imagine him walking the wide path to the left in Pissarro’s painting, which also captures the bare trees that for a moment carry Edward's mind back to Shiloh. The detail that ducks left rippling wakes in the big round pool seen on the center left margin of the painting comes in a letter from Kenyon Cox, an Ohio art student who was in Paris in the late 1870’s. The woman buying roasted chestnuts for her children at the entrance to the garden was inspired by a print or painting that I saw on line. If anybody happens to know of one, please send me the link! Read More